Occupy movement - I'm in the 100%

[Royd]

Quote:
*I* didn't do ANY of those things, yet when the crash came, I lost a lifetime of savings. The cushion for my retirement is now gone and it's long past the time when I can go back to my original career. Now we are grateful that we have chickens or there'd be very little protein in our diet these days. And against that backdrop I read about the huge bonuses the banks and brokerage houses pay their people and I gotta say, that is messed up. THEY blew through everything I saved in my lifetime with their terrible greed. They did it using money they promised to "grow" for me and all the little investors like me--and THEY are being rewarded and I am eating eggs. Nobody can tell me that is right or that it is somehow MY fault. I followed all the rules and worked hard all my life and MY reward is to sometimes go hungry so I can feed my horses?

The top 1% got richer. They got richer by stealing from me and everyone like me.

D-a-m-n straight I support the Occupy movement.


JMO


Rusty

A man once asked me how I was doing, and I told him, "I'm eating beans and rice." He said, "There you go, bragging about have two things to eat."

When the dollar becomes absolutely worthless, all of those gated communities will have to tear up that $50,000 lawn, plant veggies and raise chickens in the back yard...Everything will be even steven, then.

On the upside, I don't have the county breathing down my neck for the property tax on a McMansion.

 

[Royd]

Quote:
*I* didn't do ANY of those things, yet when the crash came, I lost a lifetime of savings. The cushion for my retirement is now gone and it's long past the time where I could go back to my original career. Now we are grateful that we have chickens or there'd be very little protein in our diet these days. And against that backdrop I read about the huge bonuses the banks and brokerage houses pay their people and I gotta say, that is messed up. THEY blew through everything I saved in my lifetime with their terrible greed using money they promised to grow for me--and THEY are being rewarded and I am eating eggs. Nobody can tell me that is right or that it is somehow MY fault. I followed all the rules and worked hard all my life and MY reward is to sometimes go hungry so I can feed my horses?

Damm straight I support the Occupy movement.


JMO


Rusty

We ALL lost money in the stock market crash-ALL of us!
IF you believe that the problems have come from TARP, WHY aren't you angry with your current administration? Does the name Solyndra sound familiar? All of these banks that are foreclosing AFTER they received money from TARP? Yeah, they suck, but guess what? The CURRENT president is the one that gave them that money to squander.
If you all want a cause, try occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and let the administration know you're fed up with THEIR squandering.

Can I get an Amen?

 

[cravenchx]

Amen!

 

[cubalaya]

amen , we should go occupy washington dc until the impeachments start and these criminals are put in jail for what they are doing to our country. how many laws are they allowed to break before they are arrested. illegal amnesty, tarp, fast and furious, solyndra, the list gets bigger daily. and of course the occupy movement is obama's civillian army made up of union thugs and useful idiots with their communist signs and pictures of che guevera the cuban murderer. if we are talking percentages then the tea party is about 70% and thats what they fear. occupy is 10% at best. look at the small crowds.

 

[chickened]

I agree with you I have seen this happen in every occupation. Someone comes in cutting corners not following the rules. Most building contractors that are out of business are ones that have not been enlightened to the fact that you have to be competetive in order to survive.
Quote:
beg to differ with you there. my husband closed his general contracting company in SoCal because he could no longer compete with the companies that were hiring illegal workers as long as he hired legal ones. he started working as a project manager / superintendent for a couple of large companies, and he had to learn spanish to speak to the workers that the subcontractors were supplying. he spent 35 years as a general contractor - and over the last 10 or 12 years he saw the work force change from mostly english-speaking legal workers to mostly spanish-speaking illegal workers.

feel free to tell the legal (hispanic and not) construction workers in SoCal that their jobs haven't been stollen... *some*body is doing the work, it's just not them.

and before anyone gets the idea it's a race thing with me, I'm hispanic. it's a legal worker vs. illegal worker thing with me.

 

[chickened]

I am not convinced "former self-employment" is your stumbling stone.

Re-enlistment seems reasonable.
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[Ridgerunner]

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I think this sums it up best for me. Only my opinion, of course.

Of course you are going to have a lot of different people with different backgrounds and different agendas, and the media is going to seek out and show the kooks because they sell advertising and get attention. You will have the professional "organizers" and "rabble-rousers" you get with any movement, whether from the right or the left. Not everybody can get a job on CNN or Fox, and these guys got to eat too. And everyone there is not there for exactly the same reasons. Just like Woodstock, some were there for the music, some for the drugs, some for the companionship, and some because it was the IN place to be.

But for a lot of people there, they worked hard, followed the rules, and find out that does not work. They see government totally dysfunctional, with the political parties more interested in positioning themselves for the next election than trying to do something to actually solve the problems. Witness all the grandstanding and brinksmanship by the political parties and politicians. Big corporations and big business have become their bogeymen as much as "Welfare", "Entitlements", and "Illegals" have become the bogeymen of others. For the extremes on both sides, they consider the system so corrupt that destruction is the only solution.

The following is purely my personal opinion. I am not saying this fits either the Tea Party or the OWS movement.

I'm not opposed to big business. I think big business is necessary for us to be able to compete on a global scale. But I see one group of politicians as trying a lot more to protect the bankroll of people that have already got it made than to trying to make it possible for people to follow the rules to have much of a chance to move upward.

Welfare is broken. It needs to be fixed, but not destroyed. It is there for a good purpose. I think the fix is to tie it to minimum wage. Make it more beneficial to hold a job than to draw welfare. You won't starve on welfare and there will still be people that milk the system, but make a minimum wage job more attractive than Welfare. I think that would get a lot of people off that cycle of living off Welfare. Not everybody, but a lot.

On Entitlements, I'm talking about things like Social Security. Forget the past. It is over and done. It does not matter what has happened in the past. Where are we today and how do we go forward? The demographics have changed. We no longer have a lot of people paying into a system to provide benefits for a few, relatively speaking. Social Security is a pay as you go system. The benefits will have to be cut to match the funds available. Do the best we can with those funds, but the intent should be not to maintain a country club lifestyle, but to provide a basic standard of living for the retired so they can get in out of the weather and not have to dig through garbage cans for food. If they have other means to living better, good for them. But use SS just to provide a basic standard. Consider this approach to other "Entitlements".

The "Illegals" are coming here because there are more opportunities here than where they came from, just like my ancestors did. If the same laws were in place then as we have now, most of my ancestors would have probably been illegal too. People are going to go where they think they have a better opportunity even if that means hardship and danger, whether that means following the Oregon Trail or slipping across the Rio Grande. That is just a fact of life. Deal with it. Most of the people coming in are the types of people that built our country, hardworking risk-takers that want a better life for themselves and their children. I don't hold anything against them personally. I'd like to think I'd do the same if I were in their position. But it is a problem. We do need to get a grip on it. And for this one, I don't have a solution.

 

[Capvin]

Quote:
Ridgerunner.....I quote the above from Cubalaya only to show the difference between someone with somewhat clear and reasoned thought (Ridgerunner) and a statement that should bring tears to any thinking persons eyes (Cubalaya). What I would like now is to hear several "Amens" to the thoughts stated by Cubalaya and then please explain to me how anyone can ever get to that thought process.

 

[chickened]

Good point Ridgerunner. The notion that when you retire you can live at the same level as when you were working is un-realistic and improbable when relying on the taxpayer for that level of lifestyle. SS was designed as a safety net not complete support to maintain an RV, boat, vacations etc.

People are being sold ideas that promise big but deliver small. They say go to college, they even give you college money and unrealistic loans with rediculously low payments to convince you that you will be successful and have no more worries. Life tends to paint you a different picture. In some cultures the parents educate thier kids of these principles that are left out of the classroom. I cannot tell you how many young adults come out of college with no work ethics or skills only an education and an increasing amount of the type of education that only survives by applying it toward artificial government subsidized entities,research, social services and arts.

My son is studying to get his engineering degree. He chose that field because he enjoys it, there is a shortage of engineers and it is one of the carreers that starts out in the 6 digit incomes.

One of my highschool buddies went through 4 years of college got himself in debt and after multiple attempts to enter the business world he ends up making a good living in light construction in a host of fields and is very happy at what he does.

A sales job pay is great if you are good at it and a great salesperson does not need a degree to be good at selling things.

 

[Royd]

On Entitlements, I'm talking about things like Social Security. Forget the past. It is over and done. It does not matter what has happened in the past. Where are we today and how do we go forward? The demographics have changed. We no longer have a lot of people paying into a system to provide benefits for a few, relatively speaking. Social Security is a pay as you go system. The benefits will have to be cut to match the funds available. Do the best we can with those funds, but the intent should be not to maintain a country club lifestyle, but to provide a basic standard of living for the retired so they can get in out of the weather and not have to dig through garbage cans for food. If they have other means to living better, good for them. But use SS just to provide a basic standard. Consider this approach to other "Entitlements".

SS has turned into a 3 generation Ponzi scheme, whether that was its original intent or not.
I doubt if FDR foresaw an attitude toward zero population growth, or the legislature using it as a vote buying piggybank.

I have said, since I was about 40, i.e. 1993 that I was just throwing money into a black hole, and that in the end, all I'm going to get from the govt. are two open palms and a shoulder shrug.

What, we as a nation, are going to have to come to grips with is, a generation is going to have to step up and take it on the chin, seriously rework the system or kill it, altogether, and move on with our lives, as individuals.

The collectivist mindset is dieing a slow and painful death. Collectivism can only prosper in small groups, where everyone is of one mindset, and there are no slackers, or if it is run by a whip wielding tyrant....With today's entitlement mindset, the former is out of the question and the latter would be a real eyeopener, for most.​